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The danger James is warning us about in verse 13-16 is the fact when we become too arrogant in our plans and leave God out of it, we try to produce benefits on our own power. We can be humble in our planning without being indecisive and wishy washy by praying that by the Lord's will we will do whatever he allows us to do according to his will.

Perseverance in faith can sometimes be very hard. Today's problems and social pressures can cause us to lose hold of our faith and perseverance in it. It can be very hard to endure our faith, sometimes we feel God is nowhere around us or in us, Satan's lies and dark practices can be hard to endure. We must preserve at all cost regardless of the circumstances, this perseverance helps build our faith and hope in the Lord. As Christians we must encourage our fellow believers, this is what fellowship is all about. To encourage, strengthen and pray for one another will kelp us to keep going in our love and faith in Christ.

Hebrews 10:26-31, the phrase "deliberately keep on sinning" was used the author to bring to the attention of the believers, who were Jewish believers, that kept on returning to the old Mosaic laws and rituals. Knowing this and experiencing the joy of the Holy Spirit, it appears they were committing apostasy to the faith. It appears this phrase is speaking about apostasy, for the Jewish believers were going back to the parts of the Old Covenant and Mosaic law. Christ died for our sins, but in the weakness of our flesh we still sin. The Holy Spirit convicts us of these sins and should sincerely repent of them. As long as we are in the flesh we will never be totally sin free. Through faith and hope we are sanctified to be holy as Christ, only once in Heaven will we share the glory of God. The element in Hebrews 10:29 that contributes to my understanding, is the frequent apostasy tramples underfoot the blood of the Covenant and insults the Holy Spirit is the fact a person who has known the truth, experienced Gods blessings and promises and completely rejects Christ for another false teaching or belief has fallen from grace and most likely will never come again back to Christ.

If we bad mouth our neighbor we become a judge of the law. It forbids us from slandering other people and by judging other people we are setting our selves up as judges, that is not ours to do, but the one ho is trust worthy our Lord and God, who can both destroy the flesh and the soul. We may always want to bad mouth others because we feel we know better than they do or feel they are inferior to us because we are so knowledgeable. We may feel they are trying to get the edge on us by impressing our peers with their knowledge. We should not bad mouth others, who are we to judge, our judge in Heaven will judge us according to our standards and most assuredly we will not like that.

The ten commands James gives us in 4:6-10 are vital actions to us because as Christians we are to love one another as Christ loves us. We are not to let the fleshly desires stand between us and the Lord. These commands that are given to us by James go against our human nature because the devil knows our weakness and knows this weakness will keep us away from the Lord and our desires will go contrary to Gods will. The command that is the hardest for me to submit to is resisting the devil. I have learned to resist him in many ways, but still he always comes along with something new for the flesh. There is power in the name of Jesus and pray he will continue to sanctify me by lifting me up to resist all the things that are contrary to God.

According to Hebrews 3:13 and 10"24-25, the prime motive for meeting together with other Christians is to worship the Lord our God, to exhort and edify our fellow believers. Most people only go to church once a week and forget about meeting together the rest of the week. This motivation is usually to impress other people that we great Christians, but we only deceive ourselves. Christians who usually miss one or two Sunday's of service and avoid meeting together for fellowship usually get involved in worldly activities and forget about God and fellow believers. We can help the individuals who make a habit of missing services and fellowship by encouraging them to go with us to services and join in the meeting together. We should encourage them to hold fast to their hope in Christ, as we are commanded to do these things.

According to Hebrews 10:19-21 the veil in the Tabernacle of the Old Testament functioned to separate the Holy Place from the Holy of Hollies, which contained the mercy seat of God. Only once a year would the High Priest enter the Holy of hollies to sprinkle the mercy seat with the blood from the sacrifice, for his own sins and the sins of the people. The significance of the veil being ripped in half as Christ died on the cross signifies that he was the sacrifice for our sins and now the Holy of Hollies was available to all that believed in Christ and have access to the throne of God. Our access to God is called a "new and living way" because of Christ sacrifice for our sins, we no longer need an earthly High Priest to represent us before God. It is new because we no longer need animal sacrifices to approach God. It is living because Christ who offered up Himself for our sins, rose from the dead and is now living at the right side of the Heavenly Father. Christ is mediator between man and God.

James refers to members as adulteresses because we the church are married to Christ, just as a women is married to man. In the Old Testament, Gods people were referred to as His bride, the same in the New Testament the Church is the bride of Christ. The adultery of the Church members are considered adulteresses if they become friends with the world, we are married to Christ as a wife. If we enjoy the worldly things, we are flirting with it, thus leaving our husband Christ and joining with the worldly pleasures. Christ who is the head of His Church is considered the aggrieved husband, we are His and not the world's position. Friendship with the world causes us to forget the Lord and we make our allegiance to the worldly desires instead of Christ.

I know God is not against pleasure, especially if it involves time with the family and fellow Christian brothers and sisters. God is not against pleasure as long it is not for self indulgence or greed to take from others or envy to despise other people. Living to increase our own pleasure is wrong, we become self centered, greed and enviousness. This is sin against our brothers and sisters and most of all God. He wants us to love one another and have fellowship that is healthy to our spiritual benefit.

The blood of bulls and goats can't take away sin because they are only a reminder of the past years sins. Their blood did not make the people repent of their sins. The animal blood was a lesser sacrifice because they are inferior to humans. The Old Testament saints thought their sins were being carried away by the escape goat and the blood of the sacrificial animals was used as an atonement for their sins. The Lord still had mercy for the Old Testament saints, but the sacrifice was ritual in nature and had to be celebrated annually.

The purpose of Christ first coming to earth, suffering and dying on the cross, was to be a sacrifice to bare the sins of many. His second coming will be as a victorious King, he comes for all those who wait for him, no longer to die for our sins. The Jews expected their messiah to come and set his eternal kingdom then and there. Not to die but to defeat the Romans and set up his kingdom, they were not expecting a suffering messiah. The mission of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 was that the messiah was to bare the sins of many, to take up the burden of our judgement and punishment upon himself and carry them away. Christ did this by suffering and dying on the cross, he was the sacrifice for the many, by his resurrection he defeated death. This one Suffering Servant was Jesus Christ, the only Son of God.

Peace makers use the gift of peace to end strife, whether between people or nations. Peace that is sown in good faith brings a ripening crop or harvest of righteousness. Peace brings mercy to oppressed and preserves laws and moral standards among people. The people to whom this peace is offered are the ones who benefit from it provided they can remain in peace among themselves.

To have ambition is a good thing if we use it for good purposes, as seeking the Lord and understanding of his word. But most people use ambition to further their own selfish purposes. This type of ambition can cause a person to develop a bitter attitude and envy towards other people who are advancing faster then they or people who stand in their way of achieving what they want. A pure and humble heart with good moral wisdom of God's word, helps a person from becoming selfish and full of envy. A person who deny's having a selfish or envious ambition is lying to himself if they refuse to humble themselves because of their greed or objective to power and prosperity. If a person continues to deny their selfish ambition they can never be healed, that is if they never want repent of their greed. There are people who want more and more of anything they can get, even if it is impossible for them to even use in a life time. They have hardened their heat and can not become humble and are stone cold to the Holy Spirit. We need the love that the Lord offers to fill our hearts.

Jesus serves as mediator between man and God. He has become the one who draws us together, by his own sacrifice for our sins. Sin kept man separated from God, Jesus has brought us together, man and God. In order for Jesus to become the mediator between God and man, he offered his self by dying on the cross, to pay the ransom for which sin kept hold of us. We were slaves to sin, unacceptable to a Holy God, through Christ deliverance we are set free from sins death hold, we can now approach the Holy of Holy's and God.

In the old Covenant a high priest represented the people before God. They were to sprinkle the unclean people with the blood from sacrificed unblemished animals and ashes from a heifer. This was done to cleanse the unholy people their sins of the past year. The blood of the sacrificed animals was also sprinkled on the mercy seat in the holy of holy's. Thus the people were ceremoniously cleaned in order to approach God who was Holy. Christ who was without sin and physically not blemished offered up his blood from the suffering and dying on the cross. He offered up his own blood for the cleansing of our sins before God. He was our High Priest, whose blood was sacrificed in the tabernacle in heaven not made by human hands. Through his sacrifice we are cleansed of our sins so we can approach God. By cleansing our sins from the past, which have been forgiven our conscience can be clear, we can be confident in our forgiveness. Christ offering has relieved our hearts and minds of self doubt and condemnation.

The tongue is not tamable because it speaks the evil that is in the heart. It defiles a man because it lets the thought of the inner man out and testifies against him. Before the tongue can be tamed a person must have a pure heart, free of all defilement that are in the heart. If the tongue is tamed, surely a man has a good command over his moral character.

James discourages people from aspiring to be teachers because teachers are held more strictly to what they teach. They are expected to practice what they teach. They will be held more responsible before God, because they know better than anyone else what is right and correct and God holds them to it. Greater strictness is appropriate because those that teach know the truth and should live a stricter life to show himself wise before others. His wisdom is a gift from God and he now demonstrates that wisdom by living God's word and his understanding of that word. I would set a higher standard for the pastor then myself because, one, he is the Shepard of the church, by his wisdom of God's word he should be stricter in his life. However, just as myself, he is still human, though I know the word of God, through the wisdom of his teaching and my own study, we still stumble, even teachers and pastor's.

Redemption means that something is released, freed from slavery or sin by the price paid by someone else. By the blood of Christ we are redeemed from the sins in our life, we are freed from the death that sin brings. Freedom has come freely from God by the willful suffering and death Jesus had endured on the cross for our transgressions. This redemption that the Lord offers freely is for ever and ever. Being human we believers in Christ try to live a holy life, but we are still going to sin, through sincere repentance and humbling ourselves, the Lord continually sanctifies us until we reach the final glory in heaven.

The Old Testament external sacrifices for sins was unable to cleans the conscience, the sacrifices of animals had nothing by which to clear a persons conscience. These sacrifices were an external blood sacrifice established by the Mosaic laws. They were to bring to mind of the individual of their trespasses against the Lord. A guilty conscience will keep us from having intimacy with God because through the conscience the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins that were committed and there is no repentance or humbling of the heart. We remain in our sins and no relationship with God. In order for us to come boldly before the throne of God we must humble ourselves and be sincerely repentant of our sins. Through God's forgiving and merciful grace we are forgiven and have a relationship with God.

James's point of the necessity for works as compared to Paul's faith through grace is that id a true believer in Christ has faith, then through his faith works will follow. James is speaking to those that are ready Christians, but are producing no fruits in their faith. Paul teaches new believers or gentiles that we saved through faith in Christ, it is a gift from God. Paul is establishing churches, James is teaching those who are already believers.

The Old Covenant did not provide forgiveness for sins that were intentional or rebelling against God. The New Testament provides for forgiveness for sins that were intentional or rebellious against God, provided the individual is repentant, humbles himself and begins obeying God's commandments. However, if a person persist in his sins and is not repentant, they will not be forgiven, they have committed the unforgivable sin. Those that do repent and humble themselves, will be forgiven by the grace of God.

The Old Covenant failed because it had no way to cleans man from the sins they committed. It showed the commandments by which people were to live. It provided animal sacrifices for the people and the high priest and was performed annually at the temple. This was for sins that were unintentional sins committed. But, for sins with malice there was no sacrificial offering, the person was cut off from Israel and God. The primary promises of the New Testament are, the Lord will put his laws in our minds and write them on our hearts. He will be our God, all people will know the Lord, He will forgive our sins and remember them no more.

Jesus is the mediator of the New Testament which he initiated by giving up his life for our sins. He took upon himself our punishment that we deserved for our disobedience to God. Because of his atoning sacrifice, God the father has placed him on the throne, at his right side. Because of Jesus atoning sacrifice, he has become the mediator between man and God the Father, he removed any disagreement between us and God.

As practicing Christians we know that the Lord Jesus has over come the world and it's worldly desires. We know that demon's exist, but Jesus has over come them. We are to recognize demonic spirits and their ways and rebuke them in Jesus name. As non practicing Christians, even though they are believers, may not recognize the evil around them unless they practice their faith and put it to work. We know that demon's know who Jesus is and tremble, being believers who have put their entire trust in the Lord can recognize these evil personalities and rebuke in the name of the Lord.

As believers in Christ we are responsible for the poor and needy in our church community. By being responsible we are showing our faith in action. If our actions are a show of faith in the Lord, we will encourage others in our community to perhaps become members in our church and receive the Lord as their savior.